The Formula One World Chanpion - Who Would Have Thunk It!

[nsxt2000]

What a finish to the 2007 Formula One season! All the smart money said Hamilton would pull it off and failing that it would be Alonso. WRONG! The third player in the mix, Raikkonen, surprised most of us with an improbable win.

With a mixture of an error or two along with mechanical flare-ups the best Hamilton could muster was a 7th finish in the Grand Prix of Brazil leaving him second by one point in the Driver's World Championship. No matter what, he certinly had a phenomenal year and we will surely see much more from him in years to come.

Alonso came in 3rd in both the race and championship, and this after two consecutive years as World Champion.

Our Honda related entries were Sato in 12th, Davidson in 14th, Barrichello in 16th and Button with 19th. Honda did however offer the most spectacular fireworks of the race when Rubens Honda "grenaded" sending smoke throughout much of Sao Paulo. Unfortunately an all too familiar sight with Honda engines of late and very uncharacteristic of Honda's motorsport history. Hopefully next season will see marked improvments.

So Kimi the "Ice Man" joins the ranks of the best drivers in the world. I think I saw him smile, but it could have just been gas. In the words of David Coulthard, speaking personality wise, "Kimi is dead from the feet up!"

Congratulations to Kimi Raikkonen on his victory. You can bet a lot of folks lost money on that one...
-Mike S.

[nsxt2000]

After yesterday's close and somewhat unexpected finish to the Formula One season I was curious to see how the local Atlanta newspaper would handle it. So, thumbing through the sports section the headline featured the poor showing of our Falcons along side a smaller write up covering ALCS game 7 with a NASCAR blurb - and that was expected.

Flipping the pages it had more football, both college & pro, a half page concerning the Ironman Triathlon (we know how ever popular THAT is), more NASCAR - hey, we are in the South and then some basketball thrown in for good meassure.

Finally on page 11 in a two paragraph synopsis under the heading "Briefly" - "Iceman wins tight battle for F1 crown". I guess most Atlantans figured it had something to do with the ice carving championship in Finland.

The good news is that Formula One fared better than tennis. Roger Federer getting beat only rated 4 lines!

Being the curious type I called the Atlanta Journal sports department and spoke with a stafer about it. His reply was honest saying that the American market just dosen't care about F1 so they give it little play. Maybe he is right...and maybe Bernie E. was right to pull out of the U.S.

In spite of the recent lack of competition and arcane rules am I the only American who enjoys seeing and hearing a throughbred race car turning 20,000 RPM's going around something other than a circle??? Perhaps I need to dumb myself down -and that won't be hard according to my wife - and culture and intrest in NASCAR ( those arn't two words you usually see in the same sentence - "culture" and "NASCAR").

So, what's all this talk about a Johnson and what has that got to do with racing???
-Mike S.

[Jeff]

I`d also like to extend my Congratulations to Kimi Raikkonen, well deserved.